Critical Essay by Geoff Hancock

SOURCE: “Magic or Realism: The Marvellous in Canadian Fiction,” in Magic Realism and Canadian Literature: Essays and Stories, edited by Peter Hinchcliffe and Ed Jewinski, University of Waterloo Press, 1986, pp. 30-48.

In the following essay, Hancock provides an overview of magic realism in Canadian writing, arguing that Canada's vast wilderness and archeological history encourage a sense of the marvelous in its writers and artists.

The extraordinary events I'm about to describe actually happened to me. As a western Canadian, whose home town was New Westminster, B.C., I experienced the improbable on a daily basis. You might expect logging, fishing, mining, but you would be amazed by the magic, myth and metaphor in the midst of such everyday occurrence.

As I thought about my remarkable personal life, I realized the strength of memory. My memory tells...